It’s about me, Dan Gayle, and my dog. Except, there is no dog.

If you haven’t read “Don’t Make Me Think”, you’re an idiot. Ok, not an idiot. Just not-educated in web usability. I recently purchased his new book, “Rocket Surgery Made Easy”, which is his expansion his chapter on usability testing on a budget, and I’m excited to get through it.

I spotted this video on Lukas Mathis’s ignore the code blog, and I thought it was worthwhile re-posting it here.

Although Google Analytics is great, for the price AMAZING, sometimes you want to look at your site numbers a little differently. That’s why I like looking at my Awstats from time to time to get into the nitty-gritty.

One problem though, when you realize that it doesn’t exclude YOUR visits from the logs. (Wow! There are a lot of Macintosh users with Firefox in the Spokane vicinity looking at my blog! I must be popular!)

To exclude your IP or host from the stats analyzer, locate the following file on your server, and open it with your text editor of choice:

/tmp/awstats/awstats.DOMAIN.conf

Locate this section in the .conf file:

# Do not include access from clients that match following criteria.
# If your log file contains IP adresses in host field, you must put here
# matching IP adresses criteria.
# If DNS lookup is already done in your log file, you must put here hostname
# criteria.
# Note: Use space between each value.
# Example: "127.0.0.1 163.84. 201.101.51.1"
# Example: "localhost abcxyz"
# Default: ""
#
SkipHosts="YOUR IP AND ANY OTHER YOU WANT TO EXCLUDE"

Within the SkipHosts="YOUR IP AND ANY OTHER YOU WANT TO EXCLUDE" section, enter the IP address of your network connection, and hit save.

Voilá! You are now skipped from your stats. Apparently, this doesn’t work retroactively, so you should see your stats changes from this point on.

I’m a bit disappointed, but the show that I was supposed to tonight, Tuesday January 12, play at the Empyrean Coffee House in Spokane, Wa got, canceled.

The Pioneers of Prime Time TV and Courtney Marie Andrews were on their west coast tour, dubbed the “Famous Toxic Cancelled Tour” by Thomas, and they were supposed to roll into town here and we’d get our jam on.

My poster for the canceled January 12, 2010 Empyrean Coffee House show

I have a couple of new songs up my sleeve, and I’d probably have had Thomas and Jon accompany me a bit, since they’re awesome like that. Thomas and I go way back, and he’s like 1000% better than I am, so he could play what I was going to play probably better than I could, even without hearing it. And Thomas says that Jon is 1000% better than him, so who am I to argue.

But, as these things happen, the Empyrean couldn’t get its new location opened in time to play there as scheduled. (The irony is that they’re set to open the day after, on Wednesday.)

Given the long drive, they decided to find another gig in Seattle instead of driving across to Spokane, which leaves me out of the loop.

Oh, poo.

Anyway, here is a taste of what they would have sounded like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avi-XSMDrto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vom_I1-yDQg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WavPfiGFvaA

p.s.
Look at that weirdness: Jefferson Elliot painting on stage with the Pioneers. Way to go Jefferson!

Note, this isn’t me. That isn’t my mustache. It’s someone else’s body, found on teh intarwebs. It’s a fake mustache.

In reality, this is in response to someone who said to me:

Hehehe I’m sorry please don’t, er, whimper. Here, let’s go find a care bear okay? Would you like that? A big fluffy bear and a nice ice cream so the figure skater doesn’t have to cry. (okay okay I might be aSLIGHTLY sarcastic individual….;)

An appropriately mature response, I’m sure you’re sure.

I love open mic nights. No matter how crappy someone sounds, everyone claps. Everyone enjoys themselves. Word.

The HTML5 people say that the new <aside> element is named such because <sidebar> is presentational.

To which I present a DICTIONARY as a counter argument:

side·bar (-bär?)

noun

1. a short article dealing with a sidelight of a major news story and printed alongside it

2. a discussion at the bench between the lawyers and the judge, conducted outside the hearing of the jury

YourDictionary.com/sidebar

Coming from a newspaper design background, that is how I have always thought about sidebars.

Just thought I’d share this photo with you. I took it on my vacation a while back. Enjoy.

In Rainbows Disk 2 Album Cover

When Radiohead released In Rainbows, I was all over it. So the fact that In Rainbows Disk 2 has been available at Radiohead’s w.a.s.t.e. store for seemingly a while makes me both happy and depressed. (Arguably a suitable response to anything Radiohead, I suppose.)

So, I downloaded it and I’m jammin’ out on it as I write this. I’ve made it to “Down Is The new Up”, and so far IT ROCKS. So far it doesn’t seem like castoffs, like the Amnesiac B-Sides.

Go download it now, you fools! It’s only like $7 direct download.

EDIT
Ok, I’m at “Go Slowly” now, as I uploaded the album cover. Still awesome!

I watched it. It was… interesting. It was about how technology will destroy the world, through man’s greed, etc. Man vs. Machine, ALA Terminator or something. It was very bleak, and very dark. (It’s surprising how many characters died off in the movie.)

What gets me is that the “evil machines” are giant allegory about the “oil eating machine” of our current society, a fact that doesn’t make itself ever overtly known. They never once mention it, but the main bad guy’s place, an evil robot with an advanced brain that allows it to create new evil robots, is a giant multi-cylinder engine.

And all around this engine are oil rigs, pumping oil, and oil on the ground everywhere.

Oil Chugging Machine

My oh my. How clever.

It was clever, and well animated, and dark, but nothing to write home about.